Greece is a maritime country. Its people’s disposition has been honed at sea since the Mesolithic era.

Surrounded by water Greeks flourished by mastering the waves and establishing commercial networks in places that offered good harbors above all other necessities.

Most people looking at a map tend to think of the landmass as the main part of a county, but for seafaring people, the sea is their domain. This would make sense looking at the distribution of Greece cities around the Mediterranean. Even at the height of colonization (8th to 6th c. BCE), Greeks stayed as close to the shore as possible and didn’t extend too far inland.

Ships in ancient Greece were agents of protection, wealth, and education. On their hulls, Greeks ferried goods, ideas, and military might throughout the East Mediterranean and the Black Sea. They were vital to Greek life, and developed over the centuries from rough stone-age crafts to the sophisticated vessels of the Classical era.

Our information about ships comes from shipwrecks, texts, and art depictions on pottery and sculpture. Surprisingly, given the volume of maritime activity, images of ships are scant in the archaeological record, but we have a good idea of what the ships of Ancient Greece were and how they developed over four thousand years.

Stone Age Ships

Franchthi Cave (Φράγχθι Σπήλαιον) in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece offers a rich unbroken record of human habitation, and the first evidence that mesolithic people who dwelled in Greece used ships to navigate between the islands of the Aegean and the mainland.

In Franchthi cave archaeologist have found the remnants of deep sea fish and the existence of a large quantity of obsidian tools. These obsidian tools were shown through chemical analysis to have been imported form the island of Melos, 90 nautical miles of open sea away.

These are strong indications that the cave inhabitants and their contemporaries must have used boats. 

Although, no vessel has survived from the Mesolithic era, some speculate that they were light boats made of reed similar to Papyrella boats used until recently on Corfu island.

Bronze Age Ships

Later, during the Bronze Age Cycladic and Minoan civilization relied on maritime prowess for their sustenance and development.

Cycladic civilization was centered around the islands of the central Aegean, and the Minoan civilization was a “thalassocracy” (a state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea) that dominated Crete the Aegean islands and the coasts of mainland Greece and Anatolia.

Depictions of ships on Cycladic era “frying pans” and Minoan frescoes provide us with clues for what Bronze Age seafaring vessels were like.

The depiction on the “frying pan” from Syros (2800-2300 BCE) shows a long, multi-oared ship with a long vertical prow which is crowned with a fish sculpture (perhaps as a figurehead or a weather vane) sailing among spirals representing the orbital motion of the waves.

Minoan ship depictions like the amphora from Kolona, in Aegina island, show vessel type similar to Egyptian ships of the era. Ships are depicted with a curved body that culminates in arched bow and prow, which were decorated with animal and floral themes (in the Ring of Minos depiction, the end of the stern shaped as sea horse’s head) or with a curved split tail.

The Galley

The Mycenaeans of the late Bronze Age embarked for the Trojan on the newly invented galleys.

They were ships that were propelled by either square sails or oars. It took about 6 months to build a galley.

“The galley is an oared, wooden ship, built for speed, and used mainly for war or piracy. Mycenaean galleys were light and lean. The hull was narrow, as hydrodynamics dictated, and straight and low, to cut down on wind resistance and to ease beaching.

A pilot stood in the stern and worked a large-bladed single steering oar. (Incidentally, Homer gets this Bronze Age detail right: in his day galleys used the double-oared rudder.) The hull was decorated with a painted set of eyes in the bows and probably also with an image of the ship’s name, such as a lion, griffin, or snake. On the stem post was a figurehead in the shape of a bird’s head.

The galley was so successful that its form remained standard in the Mediterranean throughout Roman times.

But Bronze Age galleys lacked one refinement that marked their classical Greek and Roman descendants: the ram. The ram wasn’t invented until centuries later, possibly by Homer’s day.

Bronze Age naval battles were decided not by ramming but by crews wielding spears, arrows, and swords and engaging the enemy either from a cautious distance or up close in a hand-to-hand free-for-all.” (Strauss, 39).

A common galley in the Bronze Age era was the “penteconter”. Pentecoter galleys were about 90 feet long and were powered by 50 rowers–sitting in two rows along each side of the ship.

Other ships of the era included smaller, twenty-oared ships and larger merchant vessels which were well equipped to carry food, goods, animals, and up to 250 men around the Mediterranean.

The Ulu Burun shipwreck which sank in 1300 in the southern coast of Anatolia and carried copper ingots, luxury goods, and weapons gives us a good idea of the period ships and their cargo.

In Mycenaean era, rowers were recruited from the King’s (wanax) realm. The were paid sometimes in land allotments, and their families were looked after while they were at sea. These men rowed the ships to battle, boarded and fought enemy ships at sea, and were also the infantry that fought on land.

The rowers sat on benches in two rows of about 25 on each side of the hull, in well ventilated galleries. Their heads stood above the open bulwark but were protected by leather screens. Each rower pulled one oar.

Under their bench, the rowers stored their kit which included a leather bag for grain, clay jars or skin bottles for water and wine, along with their weapons (a shield, a spear, and a sword).

Homer describes the process of setting sail, sailing, and beaching the ships to camp in the Illiad:

“Twas night; the chiefs beside their vessel lie, Till rosy morn had purpled o’er the sky:
Then launch, and hoist the mast: indulgent gales, Supplied by Phoebus, fill the swelling sails;

The milk-white canvas bellying as they blow, The parted ocean foams and roars below:
Above the bounding billows swift they flew,
Till now the Grecian camp appear’d in view.
Far on the beach they haul their bark to land, (The crooked keel divides the yellow sand,) Then part, where stretch’d along the winding bay,” (Homer, 30)

According to Barry Strauss: “Greek kingdoms also maintained professional seamen, such as pilots and pipers (who kept time for the rowers), as well as sail weavers and other specialists. Naval architects supervised teams of skilled woodworkers in building and taking care of galleys.”

Archaic and Classical Era Ships

The Trireme

The trireme was a long, maneuverable war vessel with three banks of oars (a total of 170 oarsmen).

It was the dominant warship in the 5th century BCE, and instrumental in the formation of the Athenian hegemony of the Greek world.

During classical naval warfare, the entire ship was a missile. In battle, foes maneuvered at sea with the goal of ramming and rupturing the joints of the enemy ship, thus sinking it or disabling it.

The ram was the pointed prow of the trireme, and consisted of a strong wooden structure, a sort of projection of the keel, covered with bronze. Originally it took the form of a boar, and later – from the Classical period onwards – that of a trident.

The eyes inlaid either side of the prow humanized the hull and made it more of a fierce sea creature.

“The main war ship of the Athenians, prevailed due to her naval merits. She was a light and fast rowing ship with a powerful ram. She was rowed by 170 oarsmen who were never chained slaves but free and proud Greeks. They were divided up into three ranks, which corresponded to three levels.

Her flat bottom gave her instability as well as flexibility, so that she could move easily in shallow waters”. –Maritime Museum, Chania, Greece.

Hellenistic and Roman Era Ships

Ancient vs. Modern Ship Building Methods

The ancient method of ship construction differed significantly from that employed today in wooden shipbuilding. Today the ship’s keel and frame is built first and then the hull planks are fitted around it.

In Ancient Greece, the keel was built first and then planks of the hull were fastened to each other to form the shell. Then νομείς (στραβόξυλα, frames) reinforced the hull from the inside.

“Shell-first construction” dominated Mediterranean ship-building tradition from the Late Bronze Age until the second half of the first millennium AD, when it was gradually replaced by “skeleton first construction”, the method still used today.

Description of Shell-First Ship Construction

A good description and illustration was displayed in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens information accompanying the Antikythera Shipwreck exhibition:

“The ancient shipwright began the building of a ship by setting up the keel. (Fig. 1)

The stem and the sternposts were then mounted, and the builder began to shape the hull.

Long planks on superimposed lines were attached on both sides to one end of the ship and, given the desired curve, fastened then to the other end. (Fig. 2) Superimposed rows of planks were edge-joined and connected to each other with wooden tenons fitted into mortises cut in both edges of each individual plank.

The joinery was finally held in place with treenails driven into holes, drilled after the tenons had been fitted into the planks. (Fig. 3)

Frames were inserted in the structure only after the external hull was completed to a certain extent, first the floor timbers followed by the half frames and the futtocks. (Fig. 4)

The attachment of the frames to the planking started with the drilling of holes through planking and each attached frame, and the insertion of long wooden treenails into the holes.

Finally the wooden treenails were transfixed by bronze spikes, hammered from the external side of the planking. (Fig. 5)